So Whitney by Kevin Macdonald is way better than the Nick Brookfield doc with some great anecdotes and a story of abuse that scarred her life but structured in familiar documentary style with talking heads et al

Owen Gleiberman, film critic at Variety, wrote: “We don’t necessarily need another documentary to remind us of what a powerful and transformative singer Whitney Houston was. Whitney does something more essential: It plunges into the ‘Why?’ and comes up with a shatteringly convincing answer.”

Tom Grierson, writing in Screen Daily, wrote: “Whitney is strongest when it connects Houston to the larger history of Black America, illustrating how this glamorous performer grew up in poverty and never entirely escaped the obligation of helping to pull up her underprivileged family members.”

The Times’s Ed Potton gave it a four-star review while The Telegraph’s Tim Robey was more lukewarm, giving it three stars and writing: “The film is oddly unmoving as a memorial, but as with Amy Winehouse, it inspires a collective mea culpa for the feeding frenzy of public judgement that only turned to sympathy when it was far too late.”